


I'm not (brave enough)

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 18:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: "Life isn't always happy endings." in the mood for some angst. Asked by emettkaysworld via tumblr





	I'm not (brave enough)

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Brave enough by Lindsey Stirling and Christina Perri

“I’m sorry.”

It’s chocked and soft and caught in a slowly closing throat and Regina feels the words as knives; far too honest for them to be fabricated, far too blunt, far too rusty. The gashes dirty and swallow at the same time. And it’s that, she thinks as she closes her eyes and feels lips lingering far too close to the corner of her mouth, is what hurts the most. The words not being lies; them not being the last attempts of someone about to destroy themselves. Because, she considers as she presses her lips together in a futile effort to swallow down her own sobs, if that was the case she would be able to refute the words, to prove them untrue, to fight against what them entail.

She finds herself clenching her fingers as she feels Emma moving away; her body still far too close to hers; radiating a warmth that would have been hers to enjoy less than a day ago; less than an hour ago. She hates how her mind still reacts to it; how her hands still want to burrow themselves into Emma’s hair; how her fingers ache and the skin feels too tight as she opens her eyes again; still dry but already prickling. Her magic comes out of her in short waves that leave her breathless.

She would have fought; she thinks as she blinks and stares at the way Emma’s mouth quivers and curves into a short smile; a sad one - the kind of one she had learnt to erase with kisses and promises of a future that, for some burrowed moments, seemed to almost be about to be true. She would have fought and kicked and screamed, she would have -and had had- offered her hand: grasping the slowly unravelling threads Emma’s life had become. A far too full tapestry of things that neither of them truly wanted.

She would have secured her hold and pulled the woman away as long as she knew the other would answer but now she fears that if she tries nothing will met her fingers but emptiness. A kind of one that is growing on the pit of her stomach, throbbing on her temples as she takes a step back; further into the threshold of her home as Emma takes a step back: finally far enough for her to not be able to feel her magic, the power she had once hated because of how unused it was.

She knows everything about the woman that now looks at her, sheepish but determined and she wishes she would be able to hate her like she had done with her mother once. Hatred would be easier; rage, ire. Those would be feelings she would be able to transform into something useful; into something that wouldn’t burn her very lungs away. She, however, isn’t able to and so she watches, silent, as Emma’s hands go to the back of her jeans, the red leather jacket the woman kept on wearing whenever they are together now offending her; mocking her. Like a reminder that she can’t fix the already badly-folded lapel of the jacket, not anymore.

And if Emma looked at her with anything but sorrow she knows she would be able to do something; anything. She would be able to close the door in a fit of pretended rage. One the two of them would know is just false. But Emma’s eyes glimmer and are also glazed and Regina can only bite down her bottom lip, her mind not daring to even consider the warm sheets upstairs; the one they have shared so many times before in a pretended fling. The one they started after New York; after that lost year in where Emma’s return had meant everything. A kind of everything that Regina fights against herself not to resent. She knows she will eventually lose that fight and is already terrified when that will happen; when the memories will be tainted.

So she fights against those, fights against the resentment and tries to not follow Emma as the blonde nods one more time; already about to turn; her shoulders shaky, her expression grave.

“I do love you.” She hears her say and Regina wants to ask then why but she knows the answer for it already. Duty, a stupid sense of duty, an even more complicated feel of belonging. A kind of one she will never be able to provide. Not when the term “fulfillment” is written on the back of Emma’s eyelids every time she hears the term “savior” directed at her.

She wonders, in the middle of the doorframe, as Emma starts walking towards her car, when things went wrong. If she would have been able to sense the what, the when, the why. She knows that the doubts will devour her the second she is aware she is alone, but she can’t start shaking; not now, not when Emma is still within hearing distance.

She won’t do that to neither of them. Despite everything.

The blonde doesn’t turn but her hands are shaky by the moment they finally open the door of the car: Regina can see the glint of her keys on her hand, the way they tremble as the door opens. The bug rumbles as the younger woman kicks off the engine; the sound unnatural to Regina’s ears; the noise far too loud. She doesn’t move from the doorframe; she doesn’t want to.

It’s just when Emma finally drives off that she feels tears beginning to crawl up her lungs; choking every word she could have said. She finds she doesn’t really have any but soft wails; ones she closes the door for, trembling, shaking.

She misses the days she would have been able to destroy everything around her in a fit of rage. She wonders if she still can do it but when she reaches for that pocket inside of her there is nothing but Emma. Emma’s belief that she is better, that she can do better. She emits a broken chuckle and presses the palm of her hands against the wood of the door; relishing the pain that starts travel in spasms up her fingers and wrists when she presses the tips tightly against the surface. Enough, maybe, to exteriorize what she isn’t sure she is able to at the moment.

She is not the same woman she once was. And that, with every bit of good that had been brought into her life because of that, has also made her unable to channel that like she once knew. She wonders what will come of her.

What will she do.

It’s not an end. It’s not her end. She knows that, and the words are already tinting the walls of her mind that are bleeding Emma’s name; Emma’s face, the way the blonde looks like in the morning. Sleepy eyed and soft. Beautiful, gorgeous. Far too much. But she thinks on why it shouldn’t be the end.

It’s not like happy endings are there for the ones who run the whole path, aren’t they?

She brings her free hand up her lips and bites into the soft flesh. Not hard enough to draw blood but enough to make her yelp in pain. A pain she lets spread as she, blindly, moved away from the door. She can’t do this. Not now.

Not now.


End file.
